I have fought really hard to get where I am at today. Oh man the mistakes I have made, but the Lord has been with me all the while. I remember when I was in high school I would sleep with my Book of Mormon in hopes that it would protect me against the violence in my home. The things I have experienced, the things I have seen and heard are quite the collection. I would never trade my life. I know I chose this path in my pre-earth life because of what the Lord showed me I could become. I don't believe in normal, but I believe in traditional or average. I have longed for traditional. I have longed to just live. I know the Lord is blessing me with that. It may sound silly to some but I feel my car a gift from the Lord. A sign if you will of things to come. Each time I open my garage door my heart is flooded with gratitude and overwhelming emotion. My lot in life is not to have a constantly turned upside down life. I have no doubt that I will continue to have trials. But I know that the Lord will bless my husband in his job and we will be able to pay our bills again and to take care of ourselves and hopefully help others in their times of need. My hearts truest desire is to give back to others what the Lord has poured out to me. I want to love people. I want to hold them when there lives are spilled over in their laps. I want to help them with their homes, their meals or their children when they just can't bring themselves to do it. I want to be an instrument for the Lord. If no one ever knows my name, if I die only having been a primary teacher, visiting teacher, mother and wife then my life will have been fully lived. I don't care about fame or fortune. And that isn't just to sound fancy. I know what it feels like to hurt so bad that you lie on the floor curled up in ball almost wishing for death because your heart can't take it anymore. There are daughters of our Heavenly Father who are out there who don't know how important they are. They feel alone. They need comfort. That is where I want to be. I want to be in their home. I want to be the Lord's arms for them. There are people in my life that Lord sent along my way that kept me from completely sabotaging myself. They gave me hope. Their memories still do. I had a roommate in St George who means more to me than I think I show and more than she knows. I don't remember much about that time in my life. I do remember though how she made me feel. We would go for Sunday drives, sometimes listening to NIN (which is irony in and of itself). I wanted to be like her. She was confident and sweet at the same time. She had a strong personality and I felt protected by her, which was a feeling I so desperately needed. She stood up for me. She would tell me when I wasn't making the best choices. Bless her heart she must have felt like she had a little sister she had to watch over. There is lady I lived with in Texas for about 10 months. Wow the limbs she went out on for me. The thing is I was so lost. I was an emotional wreck. I made choices based on all the things that were missing in my life. I did things because I didn't know what to do, and I didn't know I had a choice. I wanted everyone...someone to like me. But the Lord in his mercy, understanding the emotional dilemma I was in sent people along my way who loved me despite the often inconveniences I put them in. I want to be that for someone else. What use are all the things I have learned if I keep it all to myself. I have a very firm testimony of the fact that we are all here to help each other return to our Father in Heaven. He could do it with out us, but what would heaven be if we all had not journeyed together to get there. I know our Heavenly Father knows each of us. He knows our needs. I know that we can be his instruments for good and have the wonderful opportunity of helping others on their paths to healing.